The Beginnings of Quakerism

The military rule which Cromwell was never able to shake off endangered
the permanence of his system, and must have endangered it even if, as his
unreasoning worshippers fondly urge, his span of life had been prolonged for
twenty years. It is the condition on which all strong intellectual and spiritual
movements rest that they shall be spontaneous. They win their way by force
of inward conviction, not by the authority of the State. How earnestly Cromwell desired to set conviction before force is known to all. He had
broken the Presbyterian and Calvinistic chains, and had declared his readiness to see Mohammedanism professed in England rather than that the least
of the saints of God should suffer wrong. Yet he dared not give equal liberty
to all. To the Royalists his person was hateful, alike as the murderer of the
King, as the General whose army had despoiled them of their property, and
as the violator of I "the known laws" of the land. How, then, could he
tolerate the religion of the Book of Common Prayer, which had become the
badge of Royalism? It is true that the tide of persecution rose and fell, and
that it was never very violent even at its worst; but it is also true that it
could never be disowned. There was to be complete freedom for those who
were Puritans, little or none for those who were not. Liberty of religion was
to be coextensive with the safety of the State. It was a useful formula, but
hardly more, when the safety of the State meant the predominance of an army,
and the head of the State dared not throw himself on a free Parliament to
give him a new basis of authority.-- S. R. GARDINER, Cromwell's Place in
History, p. 111.

THE relations of the Commonwealth to the Quaker movement have been already frequently referred to. Fox at
the beginning of his mission addressed himself specially
to county magistrates and others in authority, in full confidence that his message was what was needed for the
government of the State. He was against the hireling
ministers, but had no quarrel with the constituted
authorities. It was the disturbance of ministers by
earnest Friends which first moved Cromwell to active
interference. In the spring of 1654 he had explained to
Camm and Howgill that religious liberty, as he under-

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